"A friend is one before whom I may think aloud."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson --
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson --
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've discovered something else I miss besides the woods, and space, and quiet, and decent roads, and lack of crowding, and wild turkeys, and foxes, and deer, and cows (especially the calves).
I miss stars.
At the old house the sky was full of stars. Here there's a few. They are so few and so scattered that I can't find any of the few constellations I know. All my life Orion has been over my house, but I can't find him here. I can't find Ursa Major or Ursa Minor or the Milky Way! It's that bad.
I can't find Arcturus, the star that I'd assigned to Jay. Or the Pleiades.
I've missed the stars since I moved here, but I got especially frustrated when I saw a very bright star in the east (maybe a planet?), and tried to find some recognizable constellation somewhere so that maybe I could locate it on a star map and find out what it is.
Nothing. A star here, a star there. Scattered, far apart, and dim.
But at any time of the day or night, I'll see a minimum of three airplanes.
Not a satisfactory trade.
--------------------------------
Later - I found a website about stargazing (http://stardate.org/nightsky/weekly), and my mysterious "star" is Jupiter.
.
4 comments:
Go visit Albuquerque. Unreal number of stars.
I think what you probably saw was a plane headed for Newark. Yeah, no stars here.
I'd been watching that bright star for a few weeks. Yeah, pretty sure it's Jupiter. It rises at sunset from almost the same spot as the sun rises, and follows the sun's track across the sky. By midnight it's almost directly over the house.
...which is a bit strange because planets shine from reflected light, and on that path, it seems like it could be in Earth's shadow.
I had to go out in the middle of the night last week (to live-release yet another mouse the cat brought in - sheesh) and the sky was just full of stars. I think I need to look up more often.
Post a Comment